Growing up Catholic can introduce you to horror at an early age. Just think about the images conjured up by Lazarus rising from the grave, Christ being nailed to a cross, and deaths by stoning, beheading, or being tied to a tree and shot with arrows. Add to that stories of Satan and Hell, and you can see how Catholicism could influence the horror genre especially in Latin countries.

Filmmakers like Luis Buñuel (in films like "Nazarin," "Virdiana") and Alejandro Jodorowsky (in films like "The Holy Mountain" and "Santa Sangre") provide a tradition of horror and fantasy colored by Catholic images and religious provocation, a tradition continued more recently by directors like Guillermo Del Toro ("Cronos," "Hellboy"). Tijuana filmmaker Aaron Soto has called upon this tradition in his short film “Omega Shell.” He has a passion for the horror genre in part because he feels horror is one of the most primal human emotions.

"I think it’s very important to have a connection with that emotion because horror is part of our life. And it’s a way to confront our own demons but it’s also a way to question ourselves and to try to search for answers about ourselves."

Credit: Aaron Soto

Aaron Soto's "Omega Shell."

Soto’s passion for horror makes him the perfect choice for programming a horror showcase (the Un Mundo Extraño sidebar) and panel at this year’s San Diego Latino Film Festival says artistic director Lisa Franek.

"This is really his passion and so if we are going to have someone curate a showcase it should be someone who is passionate, it’s wonderful, Aaron's enthusiasm is actually contagious. When he talks these films I want to see them."

The story involves Leon (Aaron Poole), a man who returns to his estranged mother’s house after she’s died. The house is filled with religious statues that remind Leon of his mother’s strict and terrifying religious teachings. Writer-director Rodrigo Gudino explained in his online video diary that he wanted to make a supernatural horror film but one that avoided the devil.

"I wanted to go the opposite, you know, kind of return to religious horror and there’s not a lot of those movies out at least recently that don’t focus on exorcism and then again that’s the devil. This film has nothing to do with Satan. It has to do really with angels."

And a cult of angel worshippers. Gudino turns statues of angels and the Virgin Mary into the stuff of horror as he meticulously builds a sense of growing dread. Gudino’s film is fascinating for the way it goes against expectations. While so much of contemporary horror is about extreme gore and in your face filmmaking, his film is all about elegant restraint and a slow ratcheting up of tension. It also surprises us with the type of religious images -- in this case angels – that it chooses to employ. And that the way Leon chooses to fight off his fears is not through religion and faith but rather reason and science. You could call this an atheist’s take on Catholic horror.

Soto says Gudino is the perfect filmmaker to bring to San Diego and to make the central focus of the upcoming New Wave of Fear Horror Cinema Panel.

"Because he was born in San Diego and he was raised in Tijuana and this is the way for him to come back and show his art and what he has done to his roots."

Gudino, founder of the popular horror magazine Rue Morgue, brings together a perfect storm of elements. Born in the U.S., raised in Mexico, and making films in Canada, he seems influenced by all three countries but dominated by none. Perhaps that’s why his film feels like a fresh take on familiar genre elements.

"Growing up Catholic can introduce you to horror at an early age. Just think about the images conjured up by Lazarus rising from the grave, Christ being nailed to a cross, and deaths by stoning, beheading, or being tied to a tree and shot with arrows. Add to that stories of Satan and Hell, and you can see how Catholicism could influence the horror genre especially in Latin countries."

PS: Since you, not I, brought up the subject: "nailed to a cross," is a Biblical (unless you're Jehovah's Witness), NOT a specific Catholic account; stonings were ancient Jewish practices of punishment; the beheading of John may or may not have been a legend and is something described in the Christian Bible AS OPPOSED to a Catholic tradition; "tied to a tree and shot with arrows" you will have to give me chapter and verse on that one because I haven't heard of it; and Satan and Hell is found in different cultural traditions worldwide.